Analytical Approaches for Addressing The Variation in Back-Calculated Age-Length Relationships for Fish

Estimating an age-length relationship is a routine aspect of many fisheries studies and is simplified by the use of commercially available computer programs. These computer programs may be misleading since a result can be produced irrespective of the quality or the extent of the data, and there is some concern that back-calculated age-length relationships are sensitive to the sample size and composition. We investigated this issue by comparing estimates of mean back-calculated lengths at age and growth rates derived from subsets of a large sample of wild channel catfish Ictalurus punctatus (N=788) collected in 2001 and 2002 from 9 rivers in Mississippi, United States. Estimates of growth rate varied among subsets consisting of individual year class (2–6) of channel catfish separated from the overall sample. For nine subsets, comprising randomly-selected and increasing proportions of the overall sample (20%–100% at 10% increments of the overall sample), growth was similar. However, growth differed for a subset representing a random 10% of the overall sample. Lengths at age and growth rates derived from each of the 2001 and 2002 components of the sample both differed. All results were significant at P 0.05.